Halloween might not be the only holiday dominating the month of October. National Love Your Melon Day, Oct. 20, is meant to bring children a smile and feel confident in their own skin.

This day is significant because crew members who partake in Love Your Melon dedicate their time to donating hats to children battling cancer.

Olivia Hervey and a few other crew members went to go visit Morgan Lao-Sim, who is currently battling cancer, and her family in Port Washington, New York. This is just one of the amazing things Love Your Melon does here at St. John’s and across the nation.

Love Your Melon is an apparel brand dedicated to giving a hat to every child battling cancer in America, while supporting nonprofit organizations who lead the fight against pediatric cancer.

Shannon Mann, the PR Manager from the SJU chapter said, “Being the PR manager is something that is very special to me as LYM stands for so much of what I believe in. Though it was not cancer, my sister was sick as a child, so these programs make me smile as I see how much good they do for families!”

On Oct. 22, 2012, two students at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota founded Love Your Melon in an entrepreneurship class.  Zach Quinn and Brian Keller came up with the idea of putting a hat on every child battling cancer in America.

St. John’s’ chapter, on the other hand started this past January of 2016. Amy VanDetta and a couple of her friends in their sophomore year decided to create a campus crew earlier this year.

VanDetta said, “My friend helped a friend of hers start Love Your Melon at their school and after hearing from her what the organization was about I immediately wanted to get involved and did everything I could to bring LYM here to St. John’s. It was amazing to see that they were able to put smiles on the faces of children who don’t have a lot to smile about and I wanted to be part of that.”